black ideologies, black utopias: afrocentricity in historical perspective • by john h. bracey, jr

8/13/2019 Black Ideologies, Black Utopias: Afrocentricity in Historical Perspective by John H. Bracey, Jr.

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Contributions in Black StudiesA Journal of African and Afro-American Studies

Volume 12Ethnicity, Gender, Culture, & Cuba(Special Section)

Article 13

1-1-1994

Black Ideologies, Black Utopias: Afrocentricity inHistorical Perspective

John H. Bracey Jr.University of Massachuses Amherst

August MeierKent State University

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Recommended CitationBracey, John H. Jr. and Meier, August (1994) "Black Ideologies, Black Utopias: Afrocentricity in Historical Perspective,"Contributionsin Black Studies: Vol. 12, Article 13.

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John racey Jr nd ugustMeierBLACK IDEOLOGIES BLACK

UTOPIAS AFROCENTRICITY INHISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

BLACK NATIONALIST IDEOLOGIES have existed throughout the history of AfricanAmericans. But the exact content and the way in which their intensity andpopularity has waxed and waned can be best understood by examining thespecific historical contexts inwhich the ideas wereembedded. Such an analysis has beencompletely lacking in the current furor over Afrocentricity in its varied forms. Manyofthe ideas which are nowconsideredAfrocentric- though theywerenotlabeleda suchat the time - also flourished at the turn of the nineteenth century during whatappropriately has been described as the nadir of the Black experience in post-CivilWar America. There are sufficient parallels between that time and our own to give usreason to feel that a comparison of the social circumstances and the ideas of the twoperiods will enhance our understanding of the current debate.

A century ago blacks faced a situation that sharesmany general characteristicswith conditions today. Both were eras during which conditions for people of Africandescent everywhere in the world were getting worse, withnoclear-cut solutions in sight.The 1890smarked the peakofEuropeancolonialism inAfrica, the apogeeof scientificracism and racial social Darwinism, and contempt for all peoples of color. In the UnitedStates this was the period of rampant mob violence including scores of lynchings eachyear; the passage of Jim Crow and disfranchisement laws in the South which weresanctioned by the Supreme Court; and a deteriorating economic situation with blacksrelegated almost entirely to menial work and to the lowest positions in agriculture andindustry. The federal government, which had been moving haltingly to provide assistance to the freedmen in the years immediately following emancipation, had now turnedits back on the notion that it should assume any responsibility for assisting blackprogress. Within the black community effective strategies and tactics were sorelylacking, and the conservative, accommodating perspective of Booker T. Washingtonheld sway. Most of the handful of white allies were philanthropists wedded to theTuskegee idea and Washington s highly gradualist approach.

Much has happened in the history of race relations and in the history ofAfricanAmericans during the course of the last hundred years, but the signs indicate thatwe arelikely facing a long period of reaction and decline. While scientific racism is no longerrespectable, anti-black statements are more widespread, and being voicedmore openly,than at any time since the 1950s. The achievements of the 1960s have been undermined

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112 John Bracey Jr n ugustMeierby the federal government- by thedecisionsofboth the federal judiciary and theWhiteHouse. The prospect of economic progress has been reversed partly because of thecurrent depression and partly by the emasculation of economic opportunity programs.Within the black community, leadership is generally weak and divided with no realprospect of generating effective mass protest strategies. Advancement, such as it is,stems either from responses to crises such as the L.A. Riot or through the efforts of theslowly growing number of black elected officialswho try to use their votes and those oftheir constituents to obtain limited concessions.

Class or status divisions within the black community, highlighted by thetremendous deterioration of inner-city and rural life, have proven to be an obstacle tounified action that even the most well-meaningmembers of the new black middle classcannot overcome. Not only are racial issues on the domestic front no longer a highpriority in the judgment ofwhite public opinion or ofpolitical elites, but internationallythe high hopes held at the time that Africans and West Indians were gaining theirindependence have been dashed. Even the greatest of the African statesmen, from theindependence generation to their successors, have been unable to solve the difficultpolitical and economic problems faced by their young countries. A combination ofEuropean and American interference, the physical consequences oflong term drought,and interminable ethnic and boundary conflicts defy even the most fervent imaginationwhen it comes to solutions. Moreover, with the closing of the Cold War such leverageas the African nations once wielded in capitalizing on East West tensions has vanished.We hope that the recent events in South Africa signal a turn around in these circumstances.

Thus, despite the obvious differences, the 1890s and the 1990s share importantsimilarities. In both periods, one way in which African Americans responded to thesocial and psychological consequences flowing from the severityoftheiralienationfromthe larger society, was to redefine the situation in a more positive light. From thisperspective we can see that the focus on Africa in both cases served to create a utopiathat could not be found in the United States. In short, in both cases we are faced with thephenomenon of the invention of tradition. 1

The 1890s witnessed a resurgence of Ethiopianism which had long been afeature of Afro American Christianity. Frequently cited was the biblical text,

Princes shall come out ofEgypt: Ethiopia shall soon stretchout her hands unto God Psalms 68:31),

which was interpreted by African Americans as a promise of redemption from racialoppression and of the ultimate achievementof freedom. Given the extremely small sizeof the black academic community the total of black college graduates in 1900could nothave been more than 2,500, and virtually all of the private black colleges employed onlywhite faculty),2 i twasto beexpected thattheseideaswould be disseminatedby ministersand independent intellectuals like Arthur Schomburg and John E. Bruce. The politicalevent highlighting the salienceof the belief in the significance ofEthiopiawas theBattle

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Black Ideologies Black Utopias 113of Adowa in 1896, where an invading Italian army was defeated by the Ethiopians underMenelik 3

In various forms the ideology of Ethiopianism remained alive well into thetwentieth century. tthe popular level Drusilla Dunjee Houston s Wonderful Ethiopi-ans o the Ancient Cushite Empire 1926) and Rev. Sterling M. Means Ethiopia and theMissing Link in African History 1945) asserted the importanceof Ethiopia as the ancientcivilization from which all others sprang. Means made an explicit call for the establish-ment of an independent African state whose existence would solve the problems ofracism and colonialism. These ideas, of course, had also been articulated as part of theworld view ofMarcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association. At thescholarly level, W. E. B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, and William Leo Hansberrylabored to substantiate the seminal role played by ancient Ethiopia in the history of worldcivilizations. However, with the exception of the Rastafarians in Jamaica, the ideologyof Ethiopianism in the late twentieth century faltered on reality. Ethiopia was a state thatsuffered from its own share of the problems that bedevil all societies.

The revival of interest in Africa s distant past during the last two decades of thetwentieth century has taken the form of an intense interest in, and identification with,Ancient Egypt. What is particularly striking about this recent and quite popular interestin Egypt is the amount of energy and resources dedicated to a subject so removed from,and seemingly irrelevant to, the everyday problems of African Americans as well asthose of contemporary Africans. The stroke of genius in settling upon Ancient Egypt forsuch a utopia resides in the fact that it no longer exists, can make no demands on one sfaith, cannot disappoint one with problems of internal contradictions, nor present onewith the tension of having to decide whether to emigrate there or not. Buttressing theimportance of Ancient Egypt as a focus of study is a large body of writing designed tomake the case not only that Egyptians were black, but that the Greeks drew heavily onEgypt for their own achievements. Thus Egypt, and not 5th century BCE Athens,provided the foundation of western civilization. The intensity of the focus on the Greeksis partially due to the exaggerated claims made for their role by generations of Classicalscholars.5 Of course, these questions are of genuine intellectual and scholarly concern.What we are interested in is why such questions have become the dominant concern oso many black intellectuals t this time As we have pointed out earlier, it is undoubtedlydue to the convergence of several trends in the social context in which we live.

Thoughmuch of the excitement has centered on Egypt there actually are severaloutlooks that have been classified under the general label of Afrocentricity. Notwith-standing his interest in Egypt, Molefi Kete Asante, the leading theorist in the develop-ment of Afrocentric ideology and school curricula, draws on a wide range of Africansocieties for his generalizations and is very much concerned with areas such as West andCentral Africa from which black American s ancestors came as slaves.6 As we havesuggested, among those whose interest is centered on Egypt there exist two questions:whether the Egyptians were black in the same sense that we mean it today, and to whatextent Pharonic Egypt influenced the subsequent development of world civilizations.?An overlapping interest involves the question ofthe origins of human life on the planet;

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114 John Bracey Jr n August Meierolder arguments rooted in biblical commentary seem to be buttressed by the newerscientific advances. An Afrocentrist, for example, would emphasize the evidence thatthe earliest humanoids and even Homo Sapiens originated in Africa. there were anEve then she must have been black. The Nation of Islam, on the other hand, believesthatAfrican American are descended from TheOriginal Asiatic Blackman personswhomonemight consider to beof mixed blood andwho trace their roots not to Africabut to southwestAsia. A more provocative variant of the Nation s doctrine is thatof theFive Percenters who believe that the Blackman is God. Further complicating thepicture are those who maintain that the Ancient Hebrews were black and that AfricanAmericans are their descendants.sWhat can be seen as a more secular underpinning ofall these ideologies are the writings of black psychologists who view an Afrocentricorientation as the key to the psychological healing and regeneration ofAfrican Americans.

Muchmore so than the earlier Ethiopianism, the ideologyofAfrocentricity hasextremelywidespread support among all segmentsof theAfricanAmericancommunity.In what can be seen as a triumph of 1960s cultural nationalism, a cadre of scholars,teachers, publishers, and journalists have developed formidable mechanisms for disseminating their views throughout the nation s black communities. From Asante sgraduate program at Temple University, to the proliferation of desk-top publishers, agrowing network of independentAfrocentric schools, and the curriculaofpublic schoolclassrooms, the advocates ofAfrocentricity have made their influence felt. Outside theframeworks ofeducational institutions rap musicians such as Pubic Enemy, KRS-1, andQueen Latifah have been a major force in popularizing Afrocentric ideas amongsegments of the population that may not receive much of its information from books.

A poignant example of the extent to which Afrocentric points of view haveframed the discussion of these issues is the reception, or lack thereof, of the work ofSt.Clair Drake. Drake traversed much of the above terrain over a period of almost fiftyyears from his essays, The Responsibility of Men of Culture for Destroying theHamiticMyth (1959) and NegroAmericans and the African Interests (1966), to hisfinal, two-volume synthesis, Black Folk Here n There (1987, 1990). Hostile to anyform of special pleading or racial chauvinism, and armed with years of concreteinvolvement in African andAfricanAmericanpolitics and societies,Drake was inclinedto let his scholarly chips fall where they might. In Black Folk Here n There he tackledthe important question of how racism as we understand it today developed. In hisanalysis of attitudes and behavior towards African people, from the origins of civilization in the Nile Valley down to the contact betweenAfricans and Europeans thatmarkedthe Atlantic slave trade, Drake reached conclusions that were at odds with mostAfrocentrists. On the question ofAncient Egypt as a black civilization, for example, hesharply criticized the scholarly methods of those he felt were rushing to conclusionsunwarranted by their evidence. SonofaUNIAorganizer, friend andconfidentof wameNkrumah and George Padmore, co-author of a brilliant sociological study of a blackcommunity, and secure in his sense of himself as an African American, Drake had nostake in romanticizing theAfrican historical and cultural experience. Thus in this current

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lackIdeologies lack Utopias 115debate Drake s voice has not been drawn upon as the indispensable resource that it is.

In concluding this brief analysis, we see that one of the major driving forcesundergirding the persistence and strength of Afrocentric ideologies and utopias is thetenuous social circumstance in which much of the new black middle class finds itself.For this class, caught as it is between a socially beleaguered, politically-weak urbanunderclass and an uncertain economic future for itself, the vision of an Ancient Egyptfree of such problems, and where African peoples are treated with appropriate respect,will remain an attractive utopia.OT SI Foran analysisofsimilar processes in theirhistorical contexts seeEricHobsbawmand Terence

Ranger, eds., The Invention ofTradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).2 The best data on nineteenth century black college graduates in W E B. Du Bois, ed. TheCollege Bred Negro. Atlanta University Publications No (Atlanta: 1900), especially pages37-41.

3 For discussions of Ethiopianism see, especially, George Shepperson s Ethiopianism andAfricanNationalism, Phylon 14(Spring 1953); Pan-Africanismand Pan-Africanism : SomeHistorical Notes, Phylon 3 (Winter 1962); Ethiopianism: Past and Present in G. Baeta,ed., Christianity in Tropical Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1968); and TheAfroAmericanContribution to African Studies, Journal ofAmerican Studies 8 (December 1974);Immanuel Geiss, The Pan African Movement: A HistoryofPan AfricanisminAmerica EuropeandAfrica (NewYork: Holmes andMeir, 1974); St. ClairDrake,The RedemptionofAfricaandBlackReligion (Chicago: ThirdWorld Press 1970) SylviaM Jacobs, The AfricanNexus: BlackAmerica Perspectives on the European Partitioning of Africa 1880 1920 (Westport, Ct.:Greenwood Press, 1981) and Wilson Jeremiah Moses, The Wings of Ethiopia: Studies inAfrican American Life and Letters (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990).

4 W E B Du Bois, The Negro (New York: Henry Holt Co., 1915) and Black Folk Then andNow (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1939); Carter G. Woodson, The AfricanBackground Outlined or Handbookfor the Study ofthe Negro (Washington, D.C.: Associationfor the Study ofNegroLife andHistory, 1936) andJosephHarris sPillars in Ethiopian HistoryThe William Leo Hansberry African History Notebook Volume One (Washington, D.C.:Howard University Press, 1981) and Africa and Africans as Seen by Classical Writer: TheWilliam Leo Hansberry African History Notebook Volume (Washington, D.C.: HowardUniversity Press, 1981). On the Rastafarians see Leonard Barrett, The Rastafarians Sound ofCultural Dissonance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1977).

5 For a recent, important example seeM I Finley, ed., The Legacy ofGreece: A New Appraisal(New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).

6 AmongMolefi Kete Asante s many publications the ones most relevant for ourdiscussion areAfrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change (Buffalo: Mulefi Publishing Co., 1980), TheAfrocentric Idea (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), Kemet Afrocentricity andKnowledge (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1990) and (with Kriamu Welsh Asante) AfricanCulture: The Rhythms ofUnity (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1990).

7 The literature on this topic is enormous, but a good place to start would be with Cheikh AntaDiop s The African OriginsofCivilization: Myth orReality (NewYork: Lawrence Hill, 1974);Ivan Van Sertima s edited collections, Nile Valley Civilizations (New Brunswick: Journal ofAfrican Civilizations, 1985) and Egypt Revisited (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers,1989); and New Dimensions in African History: The London Lectures of Dr. Yosef ben

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black ideologies, black utopias: afrocentricity in historical perspective • by john h. bracey, jr

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